I’ve been wanting, for a while now, to set up a FreeNX server on my linux box at home, and another on my linux box at work. I’d like to get both my home and work linux systems to the point where it doesn’t matter if I’m at the console or coming in over the network from my PowerBook and I get the same environment. It’s a laudable goal, in my opinion.

This is actually part of another project I’m undertaking at home, of setting up the free VMWare Server on my linux box to create virtual hosts. I’d like to create a virtual image for two Windows XP images (one for my wife and one for me, and yes, I have two XP licenses for this purpose.) I’m thinking at least one or two other virtual images for linux and some other experimentation I’d like to be doing. At any rate, I was figuring, if I can work out how to get FreeNX working, I can have my virtual Linux system make itself public via FreeNX, and each of the windows hosts available via RDP.

In short, I’m swinging very heavily into the “virtualization and remote access are good” camp. Because, well, it’s good. Having ready access to a stable host over low-bandwidth links and being able to disconnect and resume a work session without much in the way of hassle at all is really handy. Ask any sysadmin.

All that said, back to FreeNX. FreeNX is to Unix systems what Citrix MetaFrame is to Windows systems. Snappy, fast remote access to a full GUI desktop. NoMachine sells the Server in a variety of licensing packages, and the clients are available for free. I figured I’d play with FreeNX, since it’s a free re-implementation based on the GPL code that NoMachine released for their products. Basically, if I liked what I saw with FreeNX, I’d strongly consider paying for the commercial version if it’ll get me better support.

I’ve only just now found the proper links for good documentation on FreeNX, so it looks like I’ll have to make a report in the future about how it goes. In the meantime, I’m going to work on installing VMWare Server and cursing my current system install, which is never optimal.

Chef: heh
Chef: i should name this tool “cheese”
Chef: is writing a tool to maintain netgroups in LDAP
Chef: the tool to maintain the netgroups -> user-based host access rules is called “ham”
Chef: (host access mapping)
Chef: so it’s only fitting, you see.
Chef: you’d have ham, and cheese.
Chef: that, and netgroups are cheesy anyway.

BigD: could be eggs
BigD: ham and eggs

Chef: fitting
Chef: since it’s all a scrambled mess anyway

BigD: the yolk’s on you

Yes, I am “Chef”.

I’ve upgraded wordpress to the latest version for this site, and also reverted back to the default Kubrick style that comes with Wordpress.

While I liked the dark color scheme, I found it hard to actually read. So, back to Kubrick we go until I find the time to tweak something else up.

In the mean time, however, it’s entirely possible that some of the formatting for the blog might be a bit off, and for that I apologize. I’ll get to it eventually.

I’m also hoping that I’ll actually have some more to write about soon. I’m really busy at work, but I’m hesitant to use that as my sole source for topics to discuss. We’ll see what happens.

Finally, I’ve added another journal for my wife at azure.unnerving.org, where she hopes to do a photo journal of sorts, starting with her recently completed trip to France.